Poetry

We Remember

We give because we remember

We do not give from what is left
We give from what we know

We give because we remember
What it feels like
to be spoken over
to be told
you are not ready
not worthy
not enough

We remember the weight of silence
how it clings to the bones
when no one calls your name in a room full of light

So we give
not because we have so much
but because we have been through so much
and survived it
and saw others who did not

We do not wait for perfection
We see brilliance in broken places
We speak life where others see ruin
We believe
again
and again
and again

There is no shame in beginning
No shame in stumbling
No shame in having once been forgotten
There is only truth
and rising
and voice
and choice

We open the door wide
not to show what we built
but to remind others
that they can build too
from ashes
from nothing
from stories that were almost lost

We teach what we know
We share what we have
Because someone once did that for us
And it saved us

That is why we give
That is why we serve
That is why we stay

Because we are still becoming
And we are not going alone

“Still, I Rise Because They Did”

by Jimmie Ware

I’ve seen the bottom.
Not just felt it—
I’ve set a table there,
fed pain from both hands,
and called it survival.

There were days I didn’t think light would come.
Nights when prayers bounced back like echoes
off locked doors.
I’ve cried in silence
so loud, it split my chest wide open.

But even then—
somewhere deep,
beneath the weight of everything I wasn’t supposed to carry,
I heard her.
Mama. Nana. Big Ma.
Women whose names ain’t written in books
but live in the backbone of my breath.

They been through worse,
and still made Sunday dinners taste like hope.
They wore grief like perfume
and dared the world to call them anything but divine.

So I rise—
not because life got easier,
but because quitting ain’t in my blood.
I’ve mentored babies who ain’t had mamas,
spoken life into girls who only knew fists,
and held the hands of boys
lost in systems built to break them.

And when folks ask how I keep going,
I tell them:

Hope don’t need permission.
It just needs a reason.
And my reason is this—
I’m still here.
And that’s enough.